Mark Laporta
The simplest answer is, don’t waste any more time aspiring. Just write. Write until you have the confidence of your own voice and the facility to bring it out on paper. Write until you can feel the wind rustling in your character’s hair, taste their food, drink their wine, kiss their lovers.
Write until the words disappear and your story grows out of experience, sensation, thought and emotion. Write until your logic is unassailable because you carry the whole world of your story in your head and no intrusion from everyday life can knock it out.
Read analytically, like a chef tasting the soup at another restaurant, like a jazz pianist looking for the lost chord in a great improvisation. What is it that other authors are good at that you’re not? How do they solve the same problem you have, that we all have—of calling up something from nothing?
Learning the craft of an art form means being willing to listen to advice, but not so willing that you find yourself chastising your greatest strengths. Know what you know, believe what you believe. The world you create has to be one you could swear you’ve already visited, so this belief is essential. Anything else is mere scene painting, like the stilted step-by-step landscapes you can “learn to paint” from TV.
By now, if you’re already impatient to get back to writing, you’ve moved on to the next level of a trek that never ends. My best advice is: Don’t look back.
Write until the words disappear and your story grows out of experience, sensation, thought and emotion. Write until your logic is unassailable because you carry the whole world of your story in your head and no intrusion from everyday life can knock it out.
Read analytically, like a chef tasting the soup at another restaurant, like a jazz pianist looking for the lost chord in a great improvisation. What is it that other authors are good at that you’re not? How do they solve the same problem you have, that we all have—of calling up something from nothing?
Learning the craft of an art form means being willing to listen to advice, but not so willing that you find yourself chastising your greatest strengths. Know what you know, believe what you believe. The world you create has to be one you could swear you’ve already visited, so this belief is essential. Anything else is mere scene painting, like the stilted step-by-step landscapes you can “learn to paint” from TV.
By now, if you’re already impatient to get back to writing, you’ve moved on to the next level of a trek that never ends. My best advice is: Don’t look back.
More Answered Questions
About Goodreads Q&A
Ask and answer questions about books!
You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.
See Featured Authors Answering Questions
Learn more